On the low end of the customer service representative spectrum there are those company stooges who seem to not give a rat’s patootie whether or not your problem is solved. In the middle, there are your pleasant, efficient CSRs who can handle customers with aplomb and resolve issues tidily enough. And then, oh then, there are those CSRs on the high end of the spectrum, the ones we love the best. [More]

The Twin Bing Bar has nothing to do with search engines or browser toolbars, but is a candy bar only available regionally in parts of the Midwest. Reader Matt tells us that we should be very sad about that, because it’s a delicious treat that everyone should get to try. He picked one up at a gas station, and was disappointed: it was stale. He was so disappointed that he contacted the company, and received a whole box of candies for his trouble. [More]

Laurel bought her backpack from Timbuk2 in 2006. While that’s practically the blink of an eye if you’re the person in charge of stocking electronics and video games at Walmart, seven years is kind of a long time as far as product warranties go. Not for Timbuk2, though. When they learned that her bag was no longer water-resistant and had lost the rubber coating its bottom, that would not do. She sent an e-mail asking whether she could send it in for a warranty repair. They couldn’t fix it for her. Instead, they sent her a credit for a replacement bag. [More]

When Kevin found a foreign object in his bag of Utz chips, he wasn’t after a freebie or about to sue for pain and suffering. He just wanted to let the company know. He couldn’t find an e-mail address, so he messaged the company using Facebook. He didn’t expect to hear back from a company VP, or to have his twist tie-filled chip bag replaced twelve times over. [More]

Jeff is an American who currently lives and works in Tokyo, Japan. Tokyo is a dense and baffling city, and his bank, USAA, created a huge problem when they sent him a check using FedEx but sort of forgot to include his street address. In a city of millions and in a neighborhood of 300,000, FedEx’s challenge was to find one foreign dude. They could have just sent the envelope back to USAA. Instead, they accepted the challenge and got the package to Jeff before the original delivery estimate was up. [More]

We’ve always said that one of the true measures of quality customer service is how a company reacts to complaints. So it’s always good to hear about a company that doesn’t just respond well to a complaint, but preempts that complaint by proactively issuing a refund. [More]

Vince sent a love letter to Y.K. Kim, the head of Samsung USA. No, he doesn’t have a crush on Mr. Kim. He is deeply in love with his Galaxy S3, and shared that love with the regional CEO of the company that brought it to him. Only his love has a problem. A pink discoloration on the screen. He was brokenhearted, and also doubtful about his future plans to buy an S4. [More]

Warning, if you have a heart, you might need to grab a couple of tissues before reading this story, which serves as proof that there are customer service reps out there who actually care about customers. A little boy who lost a shirt worn by his late father was reunited with the treasured possession after Delta Airlines employees searched through the trash to find it.

If you’ve seen the movie “Office Space,” you may have wondered: what’s so great about a Swingline stapler that the character Milton clung to his so desperately? Reader Bradley can’t vouch for the red, small-capacity type of stapler, but his office regularly uses a high-capacity stapler with a broken strike plate. Would they have to replace the whole expensive stapler? Noooo!

Roku, makers of tiny boxes that stream paid and free content to your television, is a company that has made much of its success on happy customers who evangelize to others. For companies that want to learn how to do that, here’s a lesson. Some early adopters who bought the very first Roku in 2008 received a present in the mail this week: a free Roku 3 with a nice hand-signed card. [More]

Jasmin received the best housewarming gift ever: a Littermaid self-cleaning litterbox. Well, I suppose it’s not a very good gift if you don’t have a cat, but Jasmin was very pleased with it. When the electric adapter’s end got stuck inside the unit, she tried to get it out, but failed. Instead of just running on batteries as it had been, now the whole thing was useless. What could she do? She couldn’t afford a whole new Littermaid, and hadn’t had the new one for all that long anyway. So she checked in with the company to see whether they could just replace the relevant part. They just sent her a whole new setup instead.

While his mother grocery shopped, someone stole an iPad out of the hands of a 6-year-old boy with Down syndrome. The store’s security cameras didn’t capture anything, and the only information the family had was the testimony of his twelve-year-old sister, who also has Down syndrome: “The blonde lady took it.” The story could have ended there, and made everyone sad. Mean person steals expensive but important educational tool from special needs child. Only that wasn’t the end of the story.

Joshua and his wife moved their first child’s Graco Sweetpeace swing downstairs from storage in order to rock their adorable new son. They added fresh batteries to the two-year-old toy and fired it up. They were alarmed when the swing began to play music, the lights flashed, and the swing suddenly sped up, all without anyone touching the controls. Was the newest Joshua Jr. some kind of demon baby, or was the swing defective? Had other parents experienced the nightmare of having their newborns in a smoking rogue swing? Josh went online to find out.

It’s difficult when a brand or a product that you and your family have relied on for decades fails you. It adds an extra layer of annoyance to a regular old consumer problem. Leslie had a pair of Hanes underwear and the waistband began falling apart after only one washing. She happens to be from North Carolina, and had family members who worked for Hanes. She can’t afford to buy one-use underwear, and it being Hanes added an extra later of sadness. So she wrote to Hanes. [More]

A UPS/U.S. Postal Service partnership was supposed to bring some totally excellent Star Wars items from ThinkGeek to Michael’s doorstep. It didn’t. The package went missing somewhere in the post office’s custody, never to be heard from again. There was no insurance on it, so he didn’t expect much when he let ThinkGeek know it was missing. He really didn’t expect a total replacement. [More]

The weather was bad, and Sergio’s family all left the house in a hurry. They didn’t secure the screen door properly, and the wind caught it, tearing it off the hinges. When UPS stopped by with an Amazon package, the driver could have said, “Aw, that’s a shame,” tossed their package on his porch, and then gone on with his day. He did not.

A man in North Carolina is hoping to find the Time Warner Cable employee who was the only person willing to lend a helping hand to his wife when her car ran out of gas this morning. Maybe you folks can help. [More]

Glen is a web developer in Northern Ireland. He recently switched back to using a web-hosting company he’d left about a year before. And when the provider asked if it could help with anything else and Glen jokingly requested a pizza, he was in for a surprise. [More]